Neurodivergence

Every f•cking new-years. And days, and days before. And, now, again, one night later, and the f•cking fireworks are going, again. This "Silvester" tradition is one of the things I hate most about living in Germany.

I empathise with people who have explosion-related PTSD and I also empathise with cats and dogs and other animals and always have but – f•ck – what about ND people?

Do NT people not actually realise that, for some of us, this sensory abuse is actually torturous? We aren't just "babies" being scared by something unknown: we're just experiencing a physiological reaction to a sensory stimulus that we cannot change no matter how well we understand the mechanism?

Last year (2023-24) was worse, I guess: I went basically crazy and needed to be taken in hand.

I thought I'd actually been handling this time round rather well. Yesterday, I even went out the house while the sun was shining (brightly) and the fireworks weren't yet so bad. (Although I did joke to my partner that we should be carrying a boom-box with the Saving Private Ryan theme-song going as we walked back across a muddy field.)

I played two sets of tennis to try to spend any pent up adrenaline and took medication. That often fails to induce any effect at all but my meds worked alright, last night.

But, now, it's started up, again. I don't particularly want to take meds again, two nights in a row. And it's only 18h00 so it wouldn't make sense for a few hours, yet, anyway.

This seems so ableist and so useless. Dogs, cats, people with explosion-related PTSD and me: we should all form a class-action. Or a mob.

To me, everything has, like, a correct feeling it has to give before leaving it to rest. If not, it's a little too rough, or smooth, it just feels off. And I can keep feeling it after stopping touching it. And anytime I look at the object. I can feel it when I watch a movie or show and someone puts something down in some indescribably wrong way.

To be clear, this isn't a placement thing. Organization and whatnot don't matter, it's just like "Oh my foot just dragged forward on the carpet, that was weird and rough forward, now I have to do it backward to make it feel right," or "I just put that down and from the sound, I can tell it went down wrong. I gotta go adjust it." That loops until I get it just right, usually a process of 2-45 minutes.

At work.

Opened a soda bottle and froze when basically strawberry flavored lava began to ooze all over my clothes.

AAAAAAAAA.

Even the very best software fails to understand ADHD & OCD, today, along with many other neuro-divergent traits that exist but aren't directly in scope for this particular topic.

I'm thinking about what happened to me at around 01h30, this morning, when I turned on my PC to quickly check the weather before retiring.

My PC runs Linux, has an SSD, and boots in eleven seconds from a cold start so I actually shut it down to save electricity whenever possible. I had forgotten to check the weather forecast. What should have happened was this: I press the power-button, I open Firefox which navigates to about:blank (the only remaining safe-haven on the web) and I click a bookmark that takes me to a Norwegian weather service that presents a delightfully details and entirely unanimated forecast page – no fear of surprises – then, I shut down.

Eleven seconds after pressing the power-button, KDE Plasma 6.2 popped up a nag for donations.

Now, I understand that KDE is a rather excellent, free and open-source software and I think they deserve all the support that they can get but – right then – trying to understand what the new and unusual and unexpected popup was, why something that doesn't usually happen (and shouldn't be happening on my machine) was showing, and whether it meant something was broken, and deal with all the emotions of the disruption of my expectations was something I strongly resented at 01h30 in the morning.

If I ever was to donate (and, I would, but I'm unemployed at the moment so I can't afford it) I can also assure you it wouldn't be a part of the check-the-weather-because-I-forgot workflow and I wouldn't be doing it at 01h30 in the morning unless I was drunk.

All they earned was resentment.

There is a reason why the things in my kitchen always go into their places and the knives are always sharp. There is a reason why the stuff in my bathroom goes into particular places and my wardrobe is organised "just so": I understand the cost of surprises. I do not spend that cost on things that do not warrant it but reserve that energy for things that do.

Mozilla did this in Firefox, some years back: pushing a modal, full-window popup in my face just to let me know there was a new features for picking a colour scheme! (It didn't go away when one mashed escape, either.)

Microsoft – not purveyors of the very best software – do this constantly. Every website that uses a timer or mouse-leave events to dim the page and show a light-box nag does this. Indeed, much of my ire towards KDE is because this surprise-nag behaviour is something I associate with abusive patterns employed by very worst – KDE should know better.

These vendors either fail to understand that surprises carry a cost – for me and many others – or they underestimate that cost, or they simply disrespect the impact it might have.

All they earn is resentment.

OCD comes into this story: I obsessively had to understand what KDE's novel donation popup was – it resembled a notification and I've turned as many of those off as possible so any that yet appear must be vitally important, I thought.

When it became clear that nothing was on fire, my reaction was one of rage that yet another thing had judged it fair to abuse my attention – as is today's norm. Confusion, then rage and revulsion, were felt long before I'd actually figured out that this was just a nag for donations by a project I normally praise.

It's a great "new feature" in KDE Plasma 6.2. It is supposed to show up once a year[^1] and I know myself: I know I'll either forget about it soon enough to re-ride this wave of negative emotions and unpleasant surprise this time, next year, or – worse! – I'll dwell on it and stressfully, likely sub-consciously, anticipate KDE-Nag-Month towards next December. [^3]

[^1]: Somewhere, it was also mentioned that it is only supposed to be presented to users who do not visit KDE sites and aren't likely to have seen their other outreach campaigns. Exactly how do they get that data, I wonder.

[^3]: Writing this rant, here, is me trying to flush out my resentment so I don't dwell on it any longer. I'm sorry.

No. The popup must be extirpated and, blessed-be-FOSS, it can be. (I read some of the discussions on the merge-request pertaining to the popup and they thought about that. I respect that.)

The nag engendered uncharitable sentiment but, with regards to the likelihood of my donating to KDE, my banishing of it is independent. I would love to feel financially free enough to splash cash about. I am not so sure that KDE would be top of the list[^2] but they would certainly be on the list, quite high up, and being flush to fund others and indulge in generosity is pretty much my number-1 motivation to earn money at all after food, shelter and healthcare are covered.

[^2]: They certainly wouldn't be above Signal, my masto. instance, Codeberg, a whole queue of indie game developers, several musicians and a handful of writers …

Perhaps I, alone, get enraged by software that disrupts my expectations of what will appear, interrupts my intended task, fritters away my attention, surprises me often nastily, and curses me to revisit and re-navigate the exceedingly well-charted, choppy straights of outrage.

The prevalence of this sort of annoyance, particularly in today's software, certainly suggests that these patterns do earn positive utility value for the vendors. Do the majority not mind? Do they favour rating the apps they open, run an OS because they actually want to upgrade to the next version that wouldn't even run on their hardware, move to close a browser-tab because they actually want to sign up for a newsletter, or open their browser because they had a whim to pick a new colour scheme?

Are the majority of people inured to interruption?

Not sure if this is the right community for this. If not, I'll nuke it. Just looking for somewhere that isn't world or ml now that autism.place is gone.

Here's a thought that fell upon me[^1], last night, in those wee frosty, dark and restless hours: sleep is immensely important for everyone but it is even more so for us with ADHD[^3] simply because we typically suffer from difficulties directing and commanding our attention and train-of-thought, whilest awake, and sleep, bringing dreams, brings relief.

When I do find myself struggling with control over attention – including getting lost in thoughts, inability to focus, inability to disengage and a propensity to obsess on topics – I also notice that I have absolutely no ability to let my mind drift and sort through the things that are challenging or bothering me, or it, in any kind of cathartic or therapeutic way.

I imagine that that's what the sleeping mind does and, even more so, that is what the dreaming mind does: sift and sieve thoughts and experiences and memories.

It's probably also succour for one's corporeal body. Anyone post-puberty (or sufficiently far embroiled in it) knows that one's body's wants manifest in their dreams. Conversely, I know that my ADHD can see my waking self so sunk into a mire of focus that I can go without food or water, without sleep, end up borderline hyperthermic from sitting still or failing to notice that I'm inadequately dressed, even carrying a painfully over-bloated bladder.

Watching neuro-typical people in my life, I observe that they often daydream or muse wanderingly through their ideas as they go about their lives. None of them say they identify with my tales of ignoring my physical well-being in favour of black-holes of thought. Most of them even appear to be able to think about nothing at all at times: something I certainly could never do when I'm awake and sober.

I've heard some say that things like music or yoga or running are requirements for them to do this. Some say the television needs to be on but they're not really watching it. Believe it or not: I even have neuro-diverse friends who use distraction-scrolling, online, to free their minds to mindless musings.

Those concepts are anathema to me. I find music to be exhausting despite loving it: if music is playing, you can be 100% certain that my attention will be focussed solely on it and its harmonies and musicality and dynamics and mood and message. [^4] Similar things I could write about the others and scrolling must surely be worst of all.

So, for me, I think that sleep is my brain's only chance to drift and my dreams are its only sand-box in which to play. [^8]

Could one call such drifting and playfulness unnecessary for healthy human life? I shouldn't think so.

I think that slumber offers the same to others who are either free of ADHD-related specialities, or are living with a different set, but they are rich with other chances to sort their thoughts[^5] that are impossible for people like me.

Hence my unproven argument for the heightened importance and necessity of sleep for those with ADHD.

How could I back up this argument with citation? Have you any? Have you read anything of relevance or an opinion to put forth?

What could we conclude as a consequence? Perhaps this is the seed of an argument that any wholistic tackling of ADHD should necessarily amplify its emphasis on nurturing sleep and dream-time and warding against insomnia. [^6]

Perhaps I am completely off the mark. [^7]

Where shall we go with this, Beehaw? Throw your ideas into this petri-dish.

[^1]: Hello, Beehaw, and well met. Servus. Wazzup. 'habe d' Ehre. [^2] I'm new here. I thought I'd just jump right in and make this – my first post – a proper challenging one. Testing the waters by diving into the deep end, as it were... I don't know you but please Be(e) nice and help me add a "yet" on to that statement.

[^2]: There. That's about covered all the good greetings I can dredge up from the lands I've called, "home."

[^3]: Ugh. I hate that acronym. I hate that label.

[^4]: I cannot listen to the vast majority of over-produced podcasts or shows because of this. I would play a talk- or discussion-show for the ideas being discussed but my brain just goes, "oh, music!" and the words are reduced to noise.

[^5]: Let me point out that I only experience ADHD-related inabilities to steer my attention the majority of the time. Sometimes – albeit rarely – I'm actually fine so I know what it feels like to be awake-but-drifting. I'm sure I've even meditated, before.

[^6]: I think there is certainly a connection between ADHD and insomnia and finding citations for that would pose no challenge. Sleep-disruption is also listed amongst the side-effects of every ADHD medication's package-insert that I've ever read.

[^7]: I certainly do not mean to reinforce an us-and-them mentality or "claim" sleep for ADHD people in any way. I am simply intrigued by the idea that one could posit that sleep is of even-more importance and therefore more worthy of ever-more consideration. [^9]

[^8]: I do enjoy games and many creative pursuits, too, but those waking hobbies are invariably approached with intense focus and presence. It takes active effort to prevent them from consuming me – see previous ramblings about forgetting I have a bladder.

[^9]: Of course, I would argue that sleep goes tragically ignored in every population, beyond the charlatans peddling hacks and gimmicks. Today's hypothetical does nothing to deny that.

Over the course of several years I've discovered that I've grown more paranoid and fearful when living with my neurotypical family as they haven't been emotionally supportive in the slightest.

They always compain that I never tell them anything but can I really be blamed for this when I get criticised about complaining?

I feel more comfortable around my friends as I get to listen to their IRL horror stories and I can also share mine, since I'm an empath I'm more emotionally invested in listening to people. With my friends it's a beneficial give and take whereas I'm only given the choice of listening with my family so I feel like I'm constantly taking crazy pills.

I remember after consulting with my doctor I got diagnosed and I was told that yeah I do have OCD. I tried telling my parents about it and they said it's all in my head. Gods that dreadful feeling hasn't dimished in the slightest.

Trying to find a tech job hasn't been easy as well being a new graduate with no prior experience as well. So trying to create useful/interesting FOSS apps has been hard as my motivation has mainly stemmed from my desire to escape.

Everyday I wonder if my life could have been better if I was born neurotypical.

Sorry for the rambling, please let me know if this post is unwanted here

This is a really great watch about how people often make a big deal out of nothing and like to create an agenda of us vs them when really they don't know what they're talking about.

Dives into NPD a bit, but mostly it's about the made up idea of every{one/many} being a 'narcissist' nowadays.

[alt text: a 4-panel comic by @introvertdoodles, which is titled "Not 'Appropriate'". The first panel depicts a child wearing a very creative and unique outfit, and their parent is pointing at them and saying, "You can't wear that to church." The child is replying, "Why? All my bits are covered." In the second panel, the same child and a grandparent are eating dinner at a dining room table, and the grandparent is saying, "You aren't excused until you eat everything on your plate." The child is replying, "Why? I'm full." In the third panel, the same child is holding a stuff animal, and a different parent is telling them, "You're too old to be carrying that toy around." The child is replying, "Why? The tag just says 'ages 3 plus.'" In the fourth and final panel, the same child is sitting across from a school principal in the principal's office. The principal is saying, "You can't argue with the teacher." The child is replying, "Why? He was wrong."]

I've noticed I have a problem with not noticing people's bad intentions until I'm well into an interaction or relationship, and not having good ways to respond when I do notice. Some of this may be brain, but I think much of it is habitual from things I was taught in my upbringing that don't work well in the world.

Has anyone successfully figured this one out? I've done a ton of work on myself and gotten a lot wiser, but I still keep falling into the same trap of giving my good faith time and words to people who are semiblatantly trying to take advantage of me, are asking questions in bad faith, or are just generally being kinda mean or creepy to me. Once I do notice, it's usually gotten to a point where it's a little costlier to exit the situation than I think it would be if I had noticed right away. It still happens even when I feel cynical or don't like/trust someone.

Any way to avoid this in the future? I guess I feel like I need a good reason to think "fuck this person." It's hard for me to react to it in the moment when it's not clear to me a)what they're doing and b)how to effectively shut it down or extricate myself.

Older article (2012), but still very relevant and valid.

In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.

Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians.

Psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading authorities on ADHD, says that those afflicted with ADHD have deficits in what he calls “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of established authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. ODD young people, according to mainstream mental health authorities, also have these so-called deficits in rule-governed behavior, and so it is extremely common for young people to have a “dual diagnosis” of AHDH and ODD.

Do we really want to diagnose and medicate everyone with “deficits in rule-governed behavior”?

alt-text for thumbnail in case it embeds: it is an image of a queer flag with an infinity symbol, on a drawn wooden background with the words “autistic people mistaken for AI” on it

I’m a person who was pretty badly harmed by the psych system and all that entails and I think I would feel better if I could read some wiser peoples’ words about it lol. Surely there must be some good political theory or academic writings about this that people have heard of?

I want to avoid things like memoirs, clicky articles, wellness content, etc. Looking for something more direct and zoomed out and theoretical. I feel like that has to exist?

Edit: I wrote this thinking about how much Johanna Hedva’s Sick Woman Theory or some feminist writings I read in college unfucked my head with regard to those topics.

A really good video that gets into the whole ridiculousness of autistic/'aspie' supremacy and having a us vs them mentality around NTs vs NDs, and how doing so causes harm especially because then the assumption is that all NTs and all NDs are the same, which is factually incorrect.

alt-text: [text saying "aspergers is ableist" next to the autistic pride flag on top of a digital art 2d wooden background]

I don't like being referred to as a "person with autism". I can't just set it down, it's not something I can remove. It is fundamental to the way I interact with the world, right down to how stim enters my brain. If my brain has types of inputs no allistic person can even approach, and methods of processing inherently different, it is an existence no allistic person can reach. There is no version of me that is not autistic.

A "cure" is the same as shooting me and replacing me with someone else.

The type of person I am is autistic. I am autistic.

I know it is a big trend in anarchist spaces to use person first language, but in many situations that just sounds like eugenics to me. Personhood is not some distinct universal experience. There is no “ideal human mind” floating out there in the aether for them to recognize in me.

I get that person first language helps some people recognize that thoughts happen behind my eyes, but if the only way they can do that is by imagining I’m them, I don’t care.

Very useful video and a good reminder for those of us who are autistic, neurodivergent folks who aren't autistic and neurotypicals.

Hallo Leute! Ich habe meine ADHS diagnose bekommen, und darf mich jetzt wirklich als ADHSler bezeichnen.

Ich hätte Lust auf eine Austauschgruppe zu etlichen Dingen wie Medikamenten, Erfahrungen, Apps, Strategien etc.

Um etwas Datenschutz zu garantieren, würde ich sagen alle interessierten schreiben mir eine private Nachricht, mit einem lustigen Spruch und ihrem Wunsch für die Gruppe.

(Bot-Abwehr ist nervig...)

Warnings for: Examples of awfulness against folks with insecure attachment styles (mostly avoidant), video opens on a sarcastic/satire 'bit' but the creator isn't serious, the gender binary (by the examples the creator shows, not the creator himself), traumatic situations that may have happened when any viewers to this were a child, saying all insecure attachment styles are unhealthy (but in a nice way from a place of understanding imo).

...until it is someone with narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathy and sociopathy, but mostly NPD.

EDIT: There seems to be some misunderstandings about this post. It is not an attack on this community or the users here, it's just a general vent I have for the type of people that claim to be anti-ableist until it is something they don't like.

Hello. I was diagnosed with ADHD one year ago already (I was 35 back then), but since then I'm only with medical treatment, in other words, with medication. This medication can keep my ADHD symptoms under control, at a degree. But it does absolutely nothing against my executive dysfunction and my focus issues, and I don't have proper tools to handle my ADHD.

On a Discord server someone told me to look for therapists that do online sessions from third world countries for ADHD people, but I don't know where to look for them, and I don't know whether they're actual therapists or random scammers either. I live in Spain (pointing that out in case you try to push your US narrative), and a psychologists charges between 40 € and 60 € per session, being one session per week. And I can't afford spending 160 €/240 € per month when I don't even have a job.

Does anyone can give me some advice or recommendations, or webpages where I can look for someone?

Crosspost: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/922915

So if you know what I am talking about, you know what I am talking about.

In adult-oriented American media in the old days, intellectually/developmentally/mentally disabled characters were often depicted to be wearing helmets, diapers, drooling, and having "that" tone of their voice, while speaking things that don't make sense. While this stereotype has mostly vanished, it is still kinda alive in the form of that "brainlet" wojak and Jeffy from the SuperMarioLogan videos.

I've been wondering this for a long time now. Where the hell does this stereotype come from?